This disclosure relates generally to sharing content within a social networking system and particularly to moderating content in an online forum within the social networking system.
Social networking systems often allow users to provide a comment or some user input to content displayed with the social networking system. For example, users can provide a comment on a photo, a wall posts, a profile post, etc. Additionally, social networking systems typically also permit users to generate pages or forums where users may view content posted on the forum page and provide additional comments. The forums may be about a topic, idea, business, product, etc or may be space for users to communicate with each other. Some forums however may be about sensitive topics or may be geared for particular users, and a page creator or moderator may want to block certain types of comments. For example, a moderator of a content page geared towards adolescents may want to block profane words from appearing on the page. In such an instance, the moderator may have to manually delete comments that include profanity. Additionally, a viewing user may have already been exposed to the profane comments before the moderator is able to delete the comments. Therefore, manually deleting certain comments may not provide an effective solution to moderating content in an online forum.
In some instances, a moderator may limit users who may post comments in an online forum. For example, the moderator may provide that only users belonging to certain social networks within the social networking system may comment on a forum. In such an instance, the moderator may be able to enforce content requirements with respect to comments by hoping that the permitted users will not violate the content requirements or by holding the user accountable outside the social networking system. Similarly, the moderator may also block offending users from commenting on the forum in the future. However, in such scenarios, the forum users may already have been exposed to banned content. Additionally, limiting the number or type of users may limit or inhibit different viewpoints in some forums that may benefit from diverse viewpoints. Therefore, a moderator often must choose between diversity of ideas or inappropriate comments from certain users when creating an online forum for users of a social networking system.